For the past 14 months I have been holding space in my home office, facilitating Group therapy. This is both a professional and personal accomplishment that I feel proud to share with current clients, prospective participants and others who would like to know: What is Experiential Process Group?
Our Group has consisted of between 4-7 members who each commit to at least 12 consecutive Group sessions. About six months or so ago, we started calling each 12 week period a “season.” Each season, members share what their personal goals for coming to Group are, along with exploring what going deeper, and being more vulnerable with one another, as a Group might look like.
Accountability has been one major topic, including my own accountability with writing this blog. I’ve had setbacks since stating that I’d write the blog: a sprained wrist, family obligations and plain old procrastination. Like the old Alcoholics Anonymous adage, though, I believe in “progress, and not perfection.” Therapists are not perfect human beings and I’m going to give myself a pass that it took me months to finally sit down and write this.
As Group members, we show one another respect and accountability by making a good faith commitment to show up each week. To listen to one another and to share secrets, struggles, joys. There is a healing power in being witnessed by another and surviving vulnerability. Our Group has explored everything from Harm Reduction ideas with regards to addiction, encouragement for getting out to the gym, the prevention of isolation in a challenging world to the universally human pain of grief, loss, disappointment and ever-changing relationships.
The most important aspect of Experiential Process Group is our interpersonal relationships with one another. What feelings are coming up from what is being shared? How do we experience one another? What feedback might be helpful from one another, as Peers, with this writer there? Sometimes I am speaking in a Peer role, as a survivor of bipolar one disorder. I strive to balance this perspective as a licensed counselor, the Time Keeper of sessions and the facilitator. If we’re halfway through a Group meeting, I might ask members how they feel it’s going. Are we making good use of our time? Are there issues that still need to be unpacked for the night? Do people feel they are speaking enough? Speaking too much? What is the experience?
Confidentiality is a major Norm for our Group. Every current Group member will get to read this Blog post before its final form is posted online. I appreciate the things I’ve gotten to witness as a therapist through the Group modality that I most likely would not have picked up on only using Individual sessions. I had one client claim to me in Individual counseling that his social skills are terrible. Seeing how this person positively interacts, however, with the other Group members made me understand that he had been exaggerating and/or we need to work together on combatting his negative self-perception. Another Group member extends the others astounding amounts of empathy. Some of this I am downright inspired by, but I also see it as a cautionary tale to explore with this client. Is there such a thing as too much empathy? Is there a thing as a counselor with too little? Are these people in the room with us right now?!
A third client presents as hilarious in both Individual and the Group setting. I understand them to be highly organized, kind and intelligent, but I’ve felt concern that others in their life might not be taking them as seriously as they deserve due to the comedic aspects of their personality. And, more broadly, about the men of Group therapy: Men behaving kindly towards one another, helping each other, in a way that warms my cynical heart… Men and women working on therapeutic goals, together, in the same in-person space. This is a damned rare thing, and I want to acknowledge that. We’ve had elders in our Group, too, with their wisdom. They have their right to treatment as well! Counseling isn’t just some trendy thing for younger generations.
I’ve been privileged enough to even piss off Group therapy clients through challenging and questioning problematic behavior as it relates to Group. Underneath the tip of the anger iceberg is usually where more emotions lay. There came the realization for one client that it’s OK to hear that your therapist is annoyed with your behavior. We each have a real effect on one another. The real-time anger this person experienced, in reaction to my own verbalized feelings of irritation, allowed them emotional movement. It allowed them to continue to ask insightful questions of the other members and an opportunity at a future session to explore her sisterly love for her sibling who she feels safe with. Many times people might have a hard time opening up to others because they find it difficult to trust.
It gives us questions to ponder. Who in the Group do we feel safe with? Who do we feel close to? Who in the Group do we not feel as close to? Is that how they’re coming across to others in their lives, as difficult to approach? How do we work on that? Imagine hearing personal, honest feedback from other therapy-minded people… Do we want people to feel close to us in Group? How about out in the real world? This type of therapy allows us to practice developing deeper, more meaningful relationships outside of the therapy room.
Through this long-term work, clients are modeling what caring looks like. We are expressing curiosity about one another’s lived experiences. We are finding acceptance and we are challenging one another through the process. I am gaining a more nuanced understanding of my clients. I’m grateful to be gaining more experience as both an individual and a Group counselor. The next season, the Summer Season, of Experiential Process Group begins Tuesday July 21st. I’m excited to see what the end of Spring Season brings and what themes continue or change.
